Monthly Archives: April 2003

As Senate Democrats continue to make a mockery of the judicial confirmation process, the arguments of their allies in liberal advocacy groups and on editorial boards become increasingly frivolous. In this piece for National Review Online, Robert Alt takes on the latest such argument — that certain Bush nominees are federalists, and that federalism is just a code word for a rigid states rights philosophy, which in turn is a »

Yesterday the Supreme Court decided an important case upholding the constitutionality of a 1996 law mandating the detention of certain non-citizen permanent resident aliens who are the subject of deportation proceedings. The New York Times story is handy because it links to the text of the Court’s decision and the four other opinions in the case: “U.S. can hold immigrants set to be deported, Supreme Court says.” The Court’s opinion »

Last night, my daughter asked me to watch the television show American Idol while she did her homework so that I could call her when her favorite performer, Kimberly Locke, appeared. I obliged. I had never seen this program before and was impressed by the talent of the contestants (especially that of Kimberly), but a bit put off by the ethos of the show. Much later in the evening, after »

With the war in Iraq winding down, the daily photos in Army Times include scenes of joyful homecomings. Below, the guided missile destroyer Coles enters Port Everglades in Broward County, Fla. And at bottom, evidence that being a sailor isn’t all bad. »

I guess it’s an old story, but I can’t help being shocked at the irresistible march of political correctness through the country’s education establishment. The latest manifestation: just-announced revisions to California’s textbooks to eliminate politically incorrect words and images. The results are remarkable: no more “jungle,” “Founding Fathers,” or “snowman.” No more references to Mount Rushmore, hot dogs or butter. No more images of Indians with braids, living in rural »

The Washington Post reports that President Bush has nominated a pair of African-American candidates to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. This court serves the states of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas, and, as the nation’s most conservative federal appeals court, serves them well. One of the nominees, Claude Allen, is a strong conservative. The other nominee, Allyson Duncan, was a colleague and friend of »

Yesterday it was announced that, with the threat from Iraq gone, the U.S. will pull its troops out of Saudi Arabia. Today Donald Rumsfeld confirmed that we will also be removing our troops from Germany. It will be interesting to see whether they are pulled out of Europe altogether, or moved to friendlier environs in Eastern Europe. »

John Kerry is trying to back off his comment, in a campaign speech in New Hampshire, that ”What we need now is not just regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States.” Kerry now says that it was intended as a “quip” or “lighthearted remark.” And, of course, he reminds us of his military service: ”When I fought in Vietnam and »

The appointment of Abu Mazen as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority has received a lot of publicity, some of it optimistic, but Haaretz reports that in Israel, little change is expected: “Military Intelligence told the political echelon at the beginning of the week that the new Palestinian government headed by Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has no intention of uprooting the terrorist infrastructure.” Haaretz also anticipates that the »

This Christian Science Monitor article on the volunteers from other Arab countries who went to Iraq to fight in the war centers on an interview with a young Syrian who made his way to Baghdad just before the city fell. He was interviewed in a hospital, having been paralyzed in an exchange of fire with American troops. The Syrian says: “I was shocked how easily Baghdad fell because I thought »

I noticed Hillary Clinton’s tirade the other day, in which she compared President Bush to Herbert Hoover, but didn’t have anything useful to say about it. Ben Shapiro, a college student, syndicated columnist and occasional blogger, does. He points out that Hillary’s economic policies are a dead ringer for Hoover’s. »

French writer Bernard-Henri Levy has just published a book titled Who Killed Daniel Pearl?. Based on news accounts, the book appears to be heavy on speculation. Levy’s theory–by no means unique to him–is that Pearl was hot on the trail of a connection between al Qaeda and Pakistan’s intelligence service: “My hypothesis is that bin Laden, this scarecrow of whom we are quite rightly afraid, is in some respects a »

…is the title of Michelle Malkin’s latest column. Noting the press hysteria over Ashcroft’s assertion of Justice Department authority to detain illegal aliens who “pose a danger or a flight risk,” Malkin points out that under the current non-enforcement regime, illegal aliens, when caught, are merely ordered deported. Actually leaving, however, is entirely up to them. The vast majority simply walk out of court and disappear: “87 percent of all »